In early June 2025, I hiked at Mount Shasta in northern California for two days with some other grad students. We followed the Avalanche Gulch route and slept at Helen Lake. The hike to Helen Lake is a few miles and has a few thousand feet of elevation gain. Helen Lake is quite high, around 10k feet, because you can drive up a lot of the mountain. It was my first time camping in snow, and I did not get as cold as I expected to, so that was great. We considered hiking to the top of the mountain the second day but chose not to because there had been some rockfall the previous evening and night. Instead, we watched a beautiful sunrise while eating breakfast and hiked just a little bit up. On the way back down to our car, we got to slide on our butts down some of the way, which is always fun. Mount Shasta and the area around it seems very nice, and it was cool to hike in snow in June.